I’m spending this week exploring Mexico City. After several years of not visiting any new foreign places, I decided to change that. I’m doing some of the standard tourist activities (I’ll be touring the National Museum of Anthropology when this newsletter goes out), but I’m leaning hard into the food scene of the city. Americanized Mexican food is not my first or second or third or fourth choice, so that may come as a surprise to those who know me well, but there are different options here and I’ve been able to avoid excessive spiciness and cilantro thus far.

I have not yet booked any cooking classes for this trip. Part of me now thinks I should as I gained a much deeper appreciation for empanadas after cooking them in Buenos Aires and I could use the same for tacos. I’ve already been on one food tour and have another scheduled in a different neighborhood tomorrow. That first food tour was a bit avant garde for me (though it was in the Roma neighborhood famous for being just that) and the simplest dishes were my favorites.

I’ve breakfasted in my hotel almost every morning for convenience and there’s not much to say about that. Lunch has been a mix of things. Yesterday’s lunch was my most adventurous experience yet as I ate at a place inside one of the large open air markets. I was disappointed in what I actually ordered, but that was due to a faulty memory from the day before more than the rustiness in my Spanish.

I’ve eaten at a nice restaurant every night. I’ve largely abstained from alcohol and have opted for an appetizer instead. This means I’ve had a ceviche or a crudo at every place. These are foods I cannot get at home and that the rest of my immediate family don’t like, but I enjoy fish and I love citrus. There is also a magic to the way each bite of a well-constructed crudo hits your mouth with several flavors all at once. Just don’t expect a tremendous quantity of food should you order one the next time you see it on a menu.

The most glaring “problem” about these restaurants is the amount of English spoken by the other diners. Perhaps this is because I’ve largely kept to my normal eating schedule and so eat earlier than most of the locals, but it seems like the restaurants largely exist to serve American tourists and ex-pats. That takes away some of the fun even if the quirkiness of some of the buildings means these restaurants don’t suffer from the sameness that infects restaurants back home. Take nothing away from the food, though. The food has been great.

Tango is the only dance I’ve ever tried to learn. It is also one of the more difficult dances to learn as it is entirely improvised within certain limits. It is an activity with which I have a longer personal backstory given where I was in life the first time I visited Buenos Aires and tried it, but that is perhaps a topic for a different week.

On my more recent trip to Argentina, I actually took lessons once or twice per day for the three weeks I stayed in Buenos Aires after the dove shoot in the north. There were even some group classes in Spanish and a very fun night with that group during which we went dancing together and then had a very late dinner in the heart of the city. I didn’t publish anything about those lessons at the time, though I did take copious notes for a potential writing project that has since collected metaphorical dust on my hard drive.

One of the last things I did on that trip was to purchase a pair of dance shoes. It was a pre-commitment to make myself fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy so that I’d keep up the activity. It didn’t work that way as life took its twists and turns (during 2023 especially), but as I was looking for things to do at the start of 2024 I decided to explore tango locally. For the last couple of months, I’ve been taking group lessons again and attending a few of the other tango events.

Saturday night was the local monthly milonga (social dance), which is about as close as the atmosphere gets to being in Argentina for dancing. Was I any good? Objectively, no. At least I only stepped on one person’s toes. Were there groups of women who refused to even look at me when partners were being formed? Absolutely. Frankly, I was surprised there weren’t more who refused me. If I’d actually been in Buenos Aires, then that is precisely what would’ve happened. It was still frustrating, but it offered a realistic assessment of where my skill level is right now. There is quite a bit of work to get to the point where it can really be fun, but I might just persevere.

On the last two Sundays (and this upcoming Sunday too), I’ve been taking an intensive cooking class. And by intensive, I mean that each class is four plus hours long. The classes were a Christmas present to myself. Since I cook most of my meals, better cooking means a better quality of life. It will take some time to bed in the changes and begin experimenting with new techniques and options, but I’ve begun to implement a few things.

I have a very nice apartment with space to host guests. That is part of why I chose the apartment in the first place. I’ve now been here almost six months, though, and have only had a handful of guests. To help rectify that, I invited a couple from my church small group to dinner on Monday.

The menu was simple but eclectic. I topped the pork chops with berries from Scandinavia, added cherries to the rice like might be done in Iran, and covered the squash in cinnamon and thyme. None of the dishes were new for me; I didn’t want to experiment too much. Where the cooking class came in was in the way I seared the pork chops at a much higher temperature than I have previously done, which was an effective change that added to the flavor.

The conversation was lively and enjoyable. The husband is approaching graduation and the life changes that that will bring for both of their lives. Talking to them about that reminded me of that period in my own life in the final months of law school. If someone had told me what would transpire over the next eight years, I doubt I would’ve believed them. I hope that at the very least hearing about all of the twists and turns I’ve navigated since I finished school will help steel them against the inevitable deviations that will occur—as the proverb goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I patronized a movie theater on Saturday, an older, well-kept theater downtown that is about a six minute walk from my apartment. It was the first time I’d set foot inside a movie theater since before the pandemic shutdowns almost four years ago when I watched Parasite after it won Best Picture and got a broader theatrical release. There were a few years before that during which I watched the live action short nominees and such showings would be the only films I’d watch in a theater for the year. It’s a limited release sort of thing that never existed in the small town where I grew up, but each three of the short-form categories (animated, live action, and documentary) get released as a single category “movie” every year.

One of the benefits of watching a collection of short films is that there is a built-in hedge in the experience. If one of them isn’t good, you only have to sit through a few more minutes before another one comes on. Or you can go to the bathroom without fear of missing anything important. I appreciate that part of the experience as a buttress against the sunk cost fallacy and the prospect of sitting in a theater for two hours watching the same bad film play out just because you spent the money to buy the ticket. I haven’t watched any of the animated ones so I don’t know if they’re appropriate for children, but if they are then it could be a great option if they get restless watching full-length movies.

This year I’ll go at least twice to the movies. I’ve purchased a ticket to see the live action shorts next week, but this was a Saturday matinee showing of the documentary nominees. I won’t review the films here individually, but I will say that I wasn’t that impressed with any of them. I trust that the live action shorts will be better. I’ve already seen one on Netflix (before it was nominated) and it easily trumped the quality of the documentaries. I’m hopeful that the rest will match it.

Like the majority of Americans, I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday. I watched with a large group of people, some of whom were small children, some of whom were only interested in the commercials and the halftime show, some of whom had a rooting interest in the game, some like me who were content to watch the sporting spectacle and make snide remarks about the commentators, and one person who had bet a multi-prop parlay. It was the first time I’d watched a sporting event with someone who had that sort of wager on a game, and I have a few thoughts.

I’ve written in this column before how I don’t gamble at casinos even though I like card games. It’s easier for me to abstain than to play a few hands of blackjack and then walk away. Sports betting is another place where I have bright line rules, horse racing when I’m at the racetrack being the only area where I don’t abstain entirely. I don’t like how betting on games changes my viewing experience. For the guy with the exotic parlay, all he cared about was how many times a certain player was targeted, how long the field goals were, and a few other things like that. Sure, he didn’t care who won, but he also couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the spectacle. He even hit the parlay after the game went into overtime, but that didn’t leave me pining for the coming full legalization of sports betting in North Carolina.

I don’t even play fantasy football anymore. I was in a league for a few years and it was a loose tie that kept me in touch with some of my friends from college, but I spent too much time tinkering with lineups and checking to see how many rushing yards so-and-so had. That meant that when I missed a draft due to lack of internet, I was okay that they kicked me out of the league and I never petitioned to be reinstated. I prefer to just follow my team and let that be that. Call me a curmudgeon if you must. I know the economics and how sports betting is becoming ever more pervasive in America. I am even conversant in the language of sports gambling. I just don’t like how it affects my own sports viewing experience.

The Broadway season is in full swing in Durham, and I took in another musical this week. This time I was seated to the right and in the middle tier of the theater. The audience for this one skewed even older than last time, but I expected that since the show was about a group of singers who reached the height of their fame in the 60s and 70s. The show was Ain’t Too Proud, the story and music of the Temptations.

I only knew a few of the songs and even less of the story. This was a true story, but it was hardly less melancholic and morose than the fictionalized one set to Bob Dylan music that I watched in January. It was actually a little jarring to have this story so interwoven with tragedy set to the music of the power ballads and love songs that made the group so famous.

The most impressive thing about the production itself was the number of costume changes that the main actors made during the show. Never mind the dance moves or the singing skills that I don’t have; I don’t think I’d be able to change clothes fast enough to make it in a show like that one. Watching is sufficient for me.

As for more substantive reflections, a line stuck with me and I felt the need to write about it specifically. “Don’t nothin’ rewind but a song.” The line was a motif of the production as the narrator expressed a few of his own regrets. Given my focus on adding activities to my life right now (something almost every night though I’m not sure how long that trend will last), it may be odd that that’s the lasting impression I took from the performance. Nonetheless I’ve been turning that line over and over in my own mind and have decided to interpret it as a warning. It’s well-timed in the midst of this season. Dwelling too long on the places where I didn’t make a home before isn’t going to help me make a home here. Only making a home here is going to help that.

On Sunday for lunch, I went to a dim sum place in a strip mall a few miles from downtown. That may seem a dingy description, but perhaps the best Chinese food I’ve ever had was at just such a place in Houston so I wasn’t deterred. I’d first seen this place on one of the best restaurants lists and then saw it in person when I visited a brewery located in the same shopping center. I had offered the restaurant as a possibility to some friends the day before but they were busy. I decided to go anyway since I’d put the idea of Chinese small bite goodness into my own mind.

One of the easiest heuristics for judging a restaurant is to look at the other patrons. If I’m going to a steakhouse, I want to see people who are dressed like the meal is a special occasion. If I’m going to a Latin place, I want to see Latinos eating the food. If I’m going to a Chinese place, I want to hear a language I cannot understand. It’s a quick way to estimate quality.

Well, this restaurant checked those boxes. Only a few of the patrons looked like me and several tables were not speaking English. I ordered with a combination of a paper card with everything written in both English and Mandarin where I wrote the number of each dish I wanted and a laminated menu where I could view pictures of the menu items if I didn’t recognize them by name (of which there were several). The pictures didn’t always help, but so it goes. There were also no forks on the table but only chopsticks. I’m sure that they would’ve brought a fork had I asked for one but I accepted the challenge. Then when the food came out the waitress rolled out a little cart and deposited the dishes onto my table.

Did I order too much food? Perhaps. I admit leaving a few bites uneaten. I wanted to try a smattering of the menu and so ordered about six dishes. I regret nothing. I’d like to go back with a group of people. That would let me eat even more different items, maybe even some of the more exotic ones. Exploring restaurants and cuisines is one of my priorities for 2024 and this was a good start.

I had two six-hour drives this week. Normally I would listen to a mix of podcasts and music on such trips, but recently Spotify launched an expansive audiobook offering and there were a couple of books that were right around that six-hour mark that showed up in my feed. I opted to listen to these instead, The Psychology of Money and The Courage to Be Disliked. These are two different books, one from a financial reporter telling short stories to exemplify different mental models around money and how not to get wiped out financially and the other a distillation of a school of psychology presented in a form similar to Plato’s Dialogues. Both presented ideas that I’ve continued to turn over in my head but I’ve not had the opportunity to discuss either with anyone else.

I don’t need Spotify in order to listen to audiobooks. It also isn’t necessary to use Audible or any other paid platform. I could just use Overdrive and combined with a library card have access to any number of audiobooks. I’ve even used Overdrive in the past, most commonly when I wanted to indulge in some escapism during my metro commute in DC. Yet now I don’t do that now. Perhaps the fact that I chose to listen to books at all during these rides is a testament to recommendation algorithms more than anything else. While there is definitely a risk of getting stuck in an information bubble with such algorithms, it was good to be fed a few things (presumably based on my podcast listening history) that brought some variety to my information intake.

I’ve found it a waste of time to listen to dense non-fiction. Such reading requires too many pauses to allow things to sink in that are not conducive to an audio format. I’ve tried a few times in the past and it hasn’t worked. In this newsletter I even wrote about an attempt to read and listen to a book at the same time to maximize information absorption. That didn’t work either. The sort of book that works in audio format for me is something lighter, the sort of book that could be part of an oral tradition. I suspect I’m not alone in that. While I’m not anticipating any more long drives like that for a while, recommendations are always welcome.

I failed in this week’s attempt at a new extracurricular activity. I picked out a happy hour for young professionals at a newish beer hall/taphouse on the other side of downtown. Happy hours are a coin flip at best for me and those odds have actually improved over time. However, I set myself up for failure with this one.

Simply put, I waited too long to walk over and so didn’t arrive until the event had already been going on for half an hour. That is a self-inflicted error and I know better. Arriving early is one of the most effective tactics for events like happy hours for me. This was one of my biggest takeaways from the book Quiet. If I get to a place early, I can settle into it and get comfortable before the decibel levels rise. This allows a mental shift for me from “I have to break into the event” to “I am a part of the event already and now others will join.” This is the battle raging in my head. My extroverted readers may have no familiarity with it but the introverts among you will empathize.  

The scene wasn’t aided by the cold weather forcing everyone inside and the venue’s concrete floors and cinder block walls. Combine that with conversation circles that had already formed and I waived the white flag on the event. Was the retreat too hasty? Perhaps, but that was what I chose. My hope is that by writing about the experience I’ll not self-sabotage similar events in the future.